How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting and explaining data.

Using charts and graphs is a great way to make data simpler to digest.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex information with numbers, percentages or relationships more easily, then charts and graphs allow you to present the data in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be quickly and easily understood.

Graphs and charts help explain complex data so your audience can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress posts and pages? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful WP plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert beautiful graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Allows you to upload data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Is fully responsive for mobile screens

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create your charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into .jpg and .png files and then simply add the files and an image to your content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to embed dynamic bars and pie graphs into WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a great free WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create colorful and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable data.

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or download the Visualizer plugin the WP plugin directory using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert colorful and dynamic charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

WordPress Visualizer uses Google Visualization API to render charts, which support cross-browser compatibility (adopting VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iOS and new Android releases, and are based on pure HTML5/SVG technology (adopting VML for old IE versions), so no additional add-ons are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also provides a variety of built-in that are optimized to address your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

Visualizer is a flexible and customizable plugin, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your web design. Several options are available for each chart that let you fully customize their settings.

Additionally, charts are rendered using HTML5/SVG technology to provide cross-browser compatibility (including VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Your blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without requiring the installation of any extra software.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

Inside your WordPress admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …

In the Add Plugins screen type search for “visualizer” and hit enter …

Locate the item in the search results area and click Install Now …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library from the dashboard menu …

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library section …

When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to insert into your posts and pages.

How To Configure Visualizer

To add a new graph or chart to the library, click on the ‘Add New’ button …

An image gallery displaying all of the types of graphs and charts available will come up on your screen.

Select the type of chart or graph you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …

The selected graph/chart type will open up in a new window.

The next step is to upload a CSV file containing your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row contains your column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. string, datetime, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as explained above …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, simply study the sample CSV file that comes with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, select your data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload the CSV file from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

Locate and select your file and then click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type you have previously selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a tutorial that shows you how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, go here:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing the data, check that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have picked, the plugin displays a range of customization settings and options …

The plugin gives you total control of your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, including:

• General Settings – Configure chart title settings, font styles, tooltip, and legend.
• Pie Settings – Create 3D pie charts, draw slices counterclockwise, set the text content displayed on the slice, create a “donut” pie chart, rotate the chart’s “start” angle and set the slice border color.
• Residue Settings – Set the ‘Visibility Threshold’ (the slice relative part, below which a slice will not show individually.), ‘Residual Slice Label’ (the label for the combination slice that holds all slices below slice visibility threshold, e.g. “Other”), and ‘Residue Slice Color’.
• Slice Settings – Customize the ‘Slice Offset’ (how far to separate the slice from the rest of the pie), and ‘Slice Color’.
• Layout & Chart Area – Configure the layout (total size of chart) including the width and height of the chart as a number of percentage, background color for the main area of the chart and the chart border width and color, and the placement and size of the chart area (where the chart itself is drawn, excluding axis and legends).

Once you are happy with how your graph or chart looks, click Create Chart …

Your new graph or chart will now be added to the ‘Visualizer Library’ section …

Note that every new element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you insert graphs and charts into your WordPress pages and posts quickly …

Charts and graphs added to the Visualizer Library can be accessed by their type …

After adding a chart or graph to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or trash it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you have created a new element and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to a post is really simple.

First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …

Next, place your mouse cursor where you want to insert your visual element into your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the element to be inserted into your content and click the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

Once you have added your item, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

Once the page/post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

Your page or post will display your graph or chart in the location you specified …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile screens …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This makes working with dynamic chart data in WordPress really efficient.

The plugin developers have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

For tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add attractive and interactive charts and graphs to WordPress.

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